Patanjali Yoga Sutra - 45

After mind, it's emptiness

Sukshma Vishayathwam Cha Alinga Paryavasanam

The mind can observe the body which is gross - made up of cells, atoms, molecules, sub-atomic particles and quarks floating in space. The mind and intellect are a form of energy that travels as a communication channel between these particles, forming thoughts, concepts and ideas. Beyond these forms of thought, nature is empty, without a name and form to describe it.

The capability of the mind to understand and comprehend anything ends with the concepts. When the

mind embraces the last element of nature called consciousness, it loses its own identity and dissolves into a vast that has no name or form or idea to express itself. - Swahilya Shambhavi.

(Pic. This is yet another of my many pictures of the sky above the clouds taken on an Air France flight from Chicago-Paris-Chennai. The world of thoughts here are the clouds. The last bits of contemplation are the colours of the rainbow. Beyond that is just emptiness where nature is nothing but pure consciousness.)

Patanjali Yoga Sutra - 19

Merging with nature

Bhavapratyayo Videhaprakritilayanam

Prakritilaya or becoming one with nature or its elements. It is a state of being where the consciousness is able to experience a state of oneness with a stone, a mountain, a tree, a flowing river or flowers. The unifying experience happens between the individual and nature. This happens most to poets like William Wordsworth who sang of host of golden daffodils

This Samadhi sometimes happens without an effort at any age of life. This is a glimpse of the experience of an evened out intellect which leaves its separate state of existence and merges with the bliss that already exists in the Universe.

As I walked up to the origin of the Ganga once in Gomukh, culminating in a spiritual journey, the last lap of the trek was intensely difficult. It was through the nooks and crannies of the rocks and boulders, slippery soft sand and tiny rivulets that I had to take. All exhasted with a parched throat, I sat down on a rock, well into the bank of the mighty Ganga, gushing out of the Gomukh cave. After watching the river for a while, I closed my eyes. It may have been a few minut

es or over a quarter of an hour - I do npot know. There was no voices of my co-trekkers, nor even the roar of the river that I heard. When I opened my eyes, a local resident was telling me to move out of there as the river might swell erratically. Even as I close my eyes now and recollect my experience, I know it was a glimpse of Prakritilaya Samadhi, when the individual merges with nature.

Photo: Waters of the Mandakini gushing past the temple at Kedarnath in the Himalayas.

(Vignana Bhairava Tantra, Tirumandiram, Bamboo Wisdom, swahilya.soulmate@gmail.com)